A Publication of The Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village DEARBORN, MICHIGAN Copyright 1964 The Edison Institute Dearborn, Michigan Henry Ford spent his early life on a farm. He was born in a small frame house that stood in a grove a few miles from Detroit, near the River Rouge. On each side of the river were the farms of people who had come to the Middle West to get land of their own. Henry’s father, William Ford, was one of these early settlers. The elder Ford came to America from Ireland

By the spring of 1896, he was ready to make a trial run with his own horseless carriage. First he had to tear out part of the brick wall of his shed in order to get his machine into the alley. Once in the open, the engine was started, and the car bumped down the cobblestone street and continued successfully on its first short run around the block. A few weeks later, he drove it out to the homestead in Dearborn. His father was not impressed with the contraption. These first tests meant more labor

In spite of experimentation, reorganization, and patent difficulties, the year 1907 found the Ford Motor Company operating successfully. This was a year of panic in the nation, but the company made plans to build an even bigger factory to manufacture automobiles. In 1908, it was announced that the Ford Motor Company had purchased a race track in nearby Highland Park where it would construct the largest automobile plant in the world. At the same time, draftsmen and engineers were planning a new m

Automobiles, however, were not the only thing that interested the man who put America on wheels. He had many other ideas, some of which failed while others succeeded. There was, first, the matter of his interest in farming, and in the land. He had experimented with a gasoline farm tractor early in the 1900’s, but he was unsuccessful in developing a line of farm engines. In 1915, a tractor plant at Dearborn was begun. Some of the first tractors were sent to British farmers during the first World